


Red Coffee Machine

by Hopie (hopiecat)



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-12
Updated: 2013-01-12
Packaged: 2017-11-25 04:02:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/634910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopiecat/pseuds/Hopie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are moments when Q speaks before he thinks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Coffee Machine

It was standard operating procedure for every agent within the 00 branch to have a flat vaguely close to work, for undercover alias purposes. As near as Q could understand, the whole ruse was more for the image than for necessity, and decorated well. He’d been to 005’s Soho studio apartment; one whole wall had been just windows and a crystal chandelier in the dining room. 

James’ apartment barely had glass and lightbulbs. 

Q tried to be polite. 

“It has a lovely view,” he said, looking at the view, but really noticing the fluffy-edged rot creeping up the side of a doorframe, “nice, grand view of the Thames.” The rot had spread all the way up to the ceiling. He had a sudden, sharp fear of getting crushed to death by a crumbling ceiling. 

“Yes – it’s much better in summer, mind,” said James, prodding at a shiny, red coffeemaker – easily the brightest thing in the whole room, not including the 50s chrome fridge or the polka-dot studded countertops, a relic of the marble craze in the eighties, no doubt. Globs of food had solidified against the flecks of colour. They resembled some sort of bizarre mosaic, the kind found in crumbling roman villas that had no significance on history. And there was nothing on the counter tops – no clutter, no radio, nothing personal of any kind. 

Q turned a slow, assessing circle. 

Correction: there was nothing _in the_ apartment. A sizeable cabinet for the television lay empty, dust on every knick-knack-sized shelf. The wine-cupboard had a glass front and a small family of something grey moving light and quick beyond the glass. The coffee table was from the 20s, give or take a few cracks from the 60s, and there were no framed photographs of Mister and Mrs. Bond, or magazines, or any of the things that somehow always gravitated to coffee-tables – pens, bits of paper, coasters, packets of Mini Cheddars. 

It may have been for a ruse, Q thought, but nobody in their right mind would believe that this was a home. It was, clearly, just a ruse. James didn’t live here. 

The coffee-maker spluttered to life with the well-oiled purr of a German car and the scent of brewing Arabic coffee chased away the undercurrent of mildew and neglect. Q thought of his own house, neat and pretty, surrounded by the countryside, every counter a mass of things, the coffee table groaning underneath about six different electronics at the same time and every December edition of the Literary Review, and he thought of not hearing traffic and not having rot and not, well, not having the expensive coffee maker, but he could certainly get one. 

Better yet, James could give him his. 

Q supposed he should have panicked, or at the very least had an emotional crisis, but it really made much more sense to take the coffee-maker. And James. The way he was looking at that thing was rather too fond. 

He stepped up behind him, and James didn’t tense when he slipped his arms around him. They’d gone past tensing, now. Full togetherness for six months – three months, if he didn’t count the times he’d been away. 

“If you promise not to keep that in my bed,” said Q, and it really was so easy, he didn’t know why everyone made such a big deal about this, “you can move in tonight.”

James said nothing. His body tightened up, one cell at a time, a slow ripple of tension. Sudden nerves gnawed at Q’s stomach, but he bore through. 

“I’ll need to buy more coffee,” he said, his own words like bird-tweets to him, and he pulled away from James and made for the door. 

“Q—“

“See you at home, James!” said Q, loud and obviously, and slammed the door behind him. His legs wanted to give out. He didn’t let them until he’d raced down the stairs to the main door, trying to avoid touching the curiously slick banister or the grotty walls. 

Then he stood by his car, listened to the low, malevolent grumbling of thunder, and took stock of his emotions. There was a hefty dollop of fear irrationally going ‘YOU’VE MESSED IT ALL UP’ and running amok in his veins with its hands flailing, and a little bit of disbelief (he lived there, did he really live there), and pity, and about ten others meshed into one confusing ball. From here, James’ apartment looked even more bleak: a grey strip of wall, grubby trim, ensconced within a network of criminals’-haven alleyways and rough streets. Q shuddered. Thank God for the countryside. 

He got into his car –a very visible car, but then it had four neatly plump tires – and made for the supermarket. The parking lot was full, so he edged his car half a block down and found an empty space by a confectionary, and as he shopped for eggs and milk and bread, Q studiously occupied his mind with a series of equations on the equilibrium of a new type of smoke-grenade. 

There was a sale on tomatoes. 

If there was a slope wherever it was deployed, the steel alloy would—

Christ, he lives in a hovel. 

Q blinked. He added the tomatoes. He ripped his mind away from the rot creeping up the walls. The steel alloy would carry through the equilibrium of the shot, maybe he should notch—there weren’t even any bloody pictures! Not even a framed photograph of a beautiful woman, what on earth—

“Care for a sample, sir?” said a grinning, freckle-faced saleswoman, pushing a cube of cheese into his hand before he could say no. 

His brain went at it again, tugging his attention away from a selection of peppers with an image of those naked shelves and the inch-thick layer of dust, and going, asking him was the right thing. But was it really, really the right thing? James was… well, James. There were easier ways to explain black holes than there were to explain James. 

“Buy one, get one free, sir?” another salesperson, this time with an armful of wall-paper cleaners. The question ‘would it get out rot’ burned his tongue.

It was a quite eventful shopping trip after that, and by the time Q got home, he had more produce than he needed and two bags of cleaning products he’d, for some inexplicable and non-Freudian reason, also purchased. 

His house was dark, and James’ car wasn’t there. Q’s body rippled with unease. 

He could still be there.

Or he could not be coming home. 

The first option was worse, really. After seeing that apartment, well… it wasn’t the sort of place you’d keep a traitor. Not even if he’d tried to kill you. The thing had all the charm of prison without the added benefits of protection from an armed guard. 

Q hefted a bag from the back and his forearm ached under the weight. He gave serious thought to the gym membership Moneypenny had hinted at, stuck his key chain into his mouth, and made for the house. Struggling under the weight of the bag, Q fumbled the door open and pigeon-walked into the kitchen in the dark. He dropped the bag first; twisted his aching fingers for a second, and then flipped on the light-switch. 

A bright red coffee machine, still new, waited on his counter.


End file.
